A27035:406
A second true defence of the mere nonconformists against the untrue accusations, reasonings, and…A second true defence of the meer nonconformists against the untrue accusations, reasonings, and…
A second true defence of the mere nonconformists against the untrue accusations, reasonings, and history of Dr. Edward Stillingfleet ... clearly proving that it is (not sin but) duty 1. not wilfully to commit the many sins of conformity, 2. not sacrilegiously to forsake the preaching of the Gospel, 3. not to cease public worshipping of God, 4. to use needful pastoral helps for salvation ... / written by Richard Baxter ... ; with some notes on Mr. Joseph Glanviles Zealous and impartial Protestant, and Dr. L. Moulins character.A second true defence of the meer nonconformists against the untrue accusations, reasonings, and history of Dr. Edward Stillingfleet ... clearly proving that it is (not sin but) duty 1. not wilfully to commit the many sins of conformity, 2. not sacrilegiously to forsake the preaching of the Gospel, 3. not to cease publick worshipping of God, 4. to use needful pastoral helps for salvation ... / written by Richard Baxter ... ; with some notes on Mr. Joseph Glanviles Zealous and impartial Protestant, and Dr. L. Moulins character.
London: printed for Nevil Simons, 1681
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
4. A fortiore, They that are not so much as bound in Duty to be fixed Members of a particular Church, though Baptised, are not unchristened for want of such Membership. But many Baptized person are not so much as bound in Duty to be fixed Members of a particular Church. Ergo. Instances.
1. The Eunuch baptized in his Travails Acts. 9 was only a Member of the Church Universal. 2. Those that were converted by Frumentius and Edesius when there was no particular Church: And all that are first converted in any Infidel or Heathen Land before any Church be formed. 3. Those that by Shipwreck are cast on heathen Countries where no Churches are. 4. Travellers that go from Country to Countries (as Lythgow did nineteen years, and others many.) And I think he unhappily named Jerusalem, where Travellers come that are of no fixed Church (unless he in that also be a Superindependant, and think that men may be many years Members of a Church many hundred miles off, which they have no personal communion with.) 5. Merchants and Factors, who are called to dwell long among Infidels where are no Churches. 6. Ambassadors who by their Princes are sent to reside among such, much of their lives. 7. Wanderers that have no fixed habitations; as many Peddlers and other poor wandering Tradesmen, and loose Beggars that have no Dwelling. 8. Those that live among Papists or any other Christians who impose some sin as a condition of communion. 9. Those that live among such Christians as have no true Pastors who are constitutive parts ⟨p. 77⟩of particular Churches. Some being incapable through insufficiency, some by Heresy and some for want of a true Call: Such as by Mr Dodwells Doctrine most of the Christian World are, for want of uninterrupted rue Episcopal Ordination. 10. Those who are subjects to such as permit them not to be fixed Members: As Wives hindered by Husbands, Children by Parents, and some Subjects violently hindered by Princes; who yet allow them transient Communion. And verily a man would think by the writings of many Conformists, that they took it for a Duty to obey a Prince in such a case. 11. Those who live where Church-corruptions are not so great as to make transient Communion unlawful, but so great as to make fixed communion seem to be a culpable consent: If I come in travel to a Church of Strangers, I am not bound to examine what their Discipline is, what their Lives be, or how their Pastors are called: But where I am fixed I am more bound to know these, and if I find them exclude Discipline, live wickedly and have unlawful Pastors, I may in some cases be a partaker of the sin if I fix among them. 12.